The Mill Town: A Doherty Mystery

The year is 1958 and the town of West Warwick, Rhode Island is dying. The economy is crumbling as the textile mills, once the lifeblood of the town, are closing and moving south. Against his better judgment private investigator Hugh Doherty, who runs a one-man operation over a local barbershop, agrees to take on a job for the town's political boss, Judge Martin DeCenza. He is hired to find a political foe who has gone missing a month before an important statewide election. DeCenza fears that if the man remains missing his machine will be blamed for the disappearance. Short on cash Doherty takes on the job not knowing that it will lead him into a web of corruption, deceit and ultimately murder. Along the way he becomes involved with an attractive but manipulative young woman and a slick but sinister gangster. At the heart of the mystery is a real estate deal in West Warwick that has gone bad. Doherty's bread and butter has always been finding persons who have gone missing. The Mill Town represents his first involvement in a murder investigation. Although seemingly over his head at first, in time it is only he who can unwind this complicated plot and find out why a prominent man has been murdered and by whom.